Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Born in Oakland,
California on May 23, 1986, Ryan Coogler
attended college on a football scholarship, playing wide receiver as an undergrad
before earning his MFA
in Film and Television Production at the University of Southern
California in 2011. He worked as a security guard
and as a counselor to inmates at a juvenile prison in San Francisco before getting his big break
with the help of Forest Whitaker.

The
Oscar-winning actor agreed to produce Ryan’s first feature film, Fruitvale
Station, a bittersweet biopic chronicling the last day in the life of
Oscar Grant, a 22 year-old black man shot in the back by a cop on a train
platform in Oakland, California on New Year’s Day 2009. The case became a cause
célèbre because the killing was caught on camera by numerous passengers.

Here, Ryan talks about his
critically-acclaimed writing and directorial debut, which has already won
awards at both the Cannes
and Sundance Film Festivals.

Kam
Williams: Hi Ryan. I
really loved the film. It’s very powerful.

Ryan
Coogler: Thanks so much, Kam. I appreciate your taking the time to watch it and
to talk to me.

KW:
Congratulations on winning at both the Sundance and Cannes
Film Festivals. That’s pretty impressive for a first-time filmmaker. Your
picture’s star, Michael B. Jordan, told me Fruitvale received a very long
standing ovation at Cannes.
What did that feel like?

RC:
Just playing at Cannes
was overwhelming, man. It was one of those moments I never imagined happening. I
think a lot of the response was due to the audience’s connecting to the cast.
The performances were incredible! I really felt happy for my actors, especially
Michael [B. Jordan], Melonie [Diaz] and Octavia [Spencer]. None of them had
ever been to Cannes
before. They were really moved to have their work embraced like that. And it
was very moving to me how this story that I wanted to relate about a real event
that had happened in my hometown managed to touched people thousands of miles
away.

KW:
What interested you in making the movie?

RC:
The incident itself and what happened immediately afterwards in the Bay area,
which is where I was born and raised. I heard about the tragedy almost
immediately after it happened, because I was home on Christmas break from film
school. Then it was on the news, and I still remember the first time I saw the
footage on the internet. I was very emotionally affected by it. Everybody in
the Bay was. There were protests and rallies and riots. I saw myself in Oscar.
We were the same age, he looked like me, and we wore the same type of clothes.
Seeing someone getting shot like that, and not getting a chance to say goodbye
to his loved ones was painful. I couldn’t imagine myself in that situation.
With my being a filmmaker, I wondered whether there was a way I could do
something. My mind immediately goes to that, whenever I’m affected by anything,
since film is my outlet. Then, I saw how the incident got politicized, and how Oscar
became a symbol, this icon, a martyr who had never done anything wrong in his
life to some people, and how he was demonized by others as a criminal and a
thug who got what he deserved. In truth, he was neither one of those things. He
was just a normal person who had both flaws and good qualities. So, I wanted to
tell his story from the perspective of the people he meant the most to and who
knew him the best.

KW:
Have you ever experienced racial profiling yourself?

RC:
Yes, absolutely! The most recent situation happened one night while I was just
minding my business, sitting in a car with a friend in Albany, California.
The police rolled up on us and told me and her to get out of the car and sit on
the wet sidewalk because there had been a robbery and I fit the description of
the suspect. It was cold, and we had to just sit there shivering for about 30
minutes until I guess whoever it was that got robbed finally arrived and told
the police from across the street that I wasn’t the guy.

KW:
What sort of research did you do prior to writing the
script? Did you interview any witnesses? The police? Oscar’s friends and
family?

RC:
I started by helping Oscar’s family’s lawyer organize some of the video footage
that got turned in to the prosecutor’s office for the trial. That was really
comprehensive. Then I pretty much interviewed anyone who had a meaningful
relationship with Oscar, all of his friends and family members. That’s where
the three-dimensionality of his character in the script came from. I was also
able to bring the actors around his neighborhood, and they got to spend time
with the characters they were portraying: his girlfriend, his mom, and the
friends he was on the platform with the night he was shot. I based my decisions
on all of that research.

KW:
Did the police cooperate with the project?

RC:
No, we left the cops alone. Most of them no longer work as police officers.
They were only a very small portion of the film, and we had their court
testimony, which we felt was enough.

KW:
The officer who shot Oscar was only convicted of
manslaughter. Your star, Michael, still characterized it as a murder. Which do
you feel it was?

RC:
To be honest, I think people can make up their own minds about the legal
terminology. You can call it whatever you want, but regardless, a young man’s
life was taken unnecessarily. It’s not for me to get caught up in the politics
of it. What means the most to me is that he never made it back home to his
loved ones.

KW:
Why did you decide to paint a warts-and-all picture of Oscar
Grant? Were you at all tempted to sanitize his image?

RC:
No, I never was. It wouldn’t have made sense to make a film about Oscar and not
show the struggles he was dealing with.

KW:
What message do you hope people will take away from the
picture?

RC:
To me, the film is a domestic story about this 22 year-old and his
relationships. It is my hope that people will see a little bit of themselves in
the characters. And with that, I hope it will trigger a little bit of a thought
process about how we connect to and treat each other, whether strangers or
those we’re close to. Some people never come in contact with someone like
Oscar, a young African-American male, at all. Their only access to his world is
through media. So, I hope the film offers some insight for folks like that.

KW:
Have you considered making a movie about the assassination
of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey by members of a Black Muslim sect, which
is another story of national interest? I was writing for the paper at the time,
and spoke to him just a couple of days before his murder.

RC:
I’m sorry to hear that, man. I followed the case and know a lot about Chauncey,
and was moved by what happened. Like I said before, whenever something happens
in the community, I think about it in terms of my art form.

KW:
You originally went to college on a football scholarship.
How did you make the transition from jock to film student?

RC:
Initially, I was majoring in chemistry and planning to become a doctor, if football
didn’t work out. But in a creative writing class, I had a professor who
encouraged me to go to Hollywood
and write screenplays. I thought she was a little crazy at first, since it came
out of nowhere, but it stuck in my head. I later transferred schools, switched
majors, and started taking a bunch of filmmaking classes. Then I went to USC
film school for my graduate degree.

KW:
Well, we’re all glad you did, Ryan. Thanks again for the
time and best of luck with Fruitvale Station during Academy Awards season.

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The Sly Fox Film Reviews

KamWilliams.com

The Sly Fox Film Reviews publishes the content of film critic Kam Williams. Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.